Monday, December 17, 2012

In Remembrance

Like all of you, my joy in the holiday season has been tempered by the profound sadness of last Friday's tragedy. My friend Maryam from the blog My Marrakesh posted the photo below on Facebook with the heartfelt observation that she has been finding comfort in random goodness.

Her photo inspired me to search the web for more acts of kindness.

(from the Mayor of Newark in the wake of Hurricane Sandy)

And of course this.

(Photographed by Jennifer Foster)

Someone just sent me this link too (click HERE). Twenty-six more moments that will restore your faith in humanity.

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Editor's Note:

I'm going off the grid until the new year. I'm going to work on my book, hug my family and possibly have an adventure or two. And then in 2013, join me back here and we'll do a whole lot of catching up.

Thank you all so much for another wonderful year at A Bloomsbury Life. Your wisdom, wit and endless curiosity have made this blog a place that I can't wait to get to in the morning. Your comments are always revelatory and your eagerness to be a part of the conversation humbles me. You are all SUCH an inspiration.

48 comments:

Merry Christmas Lisa and many thanks for creating a lovely little corner of magic at A Bloomsbury Life. May the new year bring more peace and joy and poetry to all of us, and less strife and anger and the black holes which seem to swallow so many... Your charming essays and images always brighten my week!xx Lily

On Sunday I went to buy my best friend a scarf she had been admiring the day before when we were Xmas shopping together. When I got to the register I saw a little cast metal Christmas tree behind the counter, and I asked if I could see it. The owner of the shop, who I had been talking to about the CT tragedy and birdwatching also told me, "You can have that tree." It was a music box. I had never met him before, I rarely shop there. I am not sure what his impulse was, but I will always think of his sweet generosity every time I see the little tree.

Thank you for these inspiring photos. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Enjoy all those small moments with your family, good luck with your book and I look forward to coming back here in the new year. Susan

Thank.you Lisa for sharing these thoughts so relevant to all of us. I have just returned from Yunnan and Ghizou provinces in China and experienced such kindness from the Minority people's living in the countryside....a great three week exploration and now back to the English countryside Herefordshire.

Have a fun time over the festive season and best wishes for the new year. Your blog is always fresh, interesting and most of all thoughtful. I look forward to more in 2013.Jeni

Some further inspiration for your dear Lisa. Merry Christmas http://writemesomethingbeautiful.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Let-It-Be.pdf This is an amazing story from an old boyfriend, now captain of a river barge in Ghent. Let it be.

Dear LisaThank you for a very thoughtful and inspiring blog. I have been reading you for at least a couple of years now and always look forward to your next post. Enjoy your 'odd angles' and whimsicality. As a fellow regular London traveller it is so nice to see that we like the same places and things in the city :-)Merry Christmas and happy book work.

That is so interesting!! I have hundreds of large art books that I have boxed up... to take to an auction house for sale. It will cost me a small fortune to hire a Man With A Van, just for transportion purposes.

Do you think it might be helpful if people asked for one or more of these art books? I don't want any money for the books - just the costs of postage. The books cover art and architecture from the Renaissance on, with the vast majority covering The Impressionists to World War One.

It's taken me a few days to be able to read any blogs mentioning the horror of this past Friday since it happened so close to home, but yours is truly inspiring and the small actions of everyday heroes have lifted my spirits. All my warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday filled with hugs and adventure and a peaceful new year! XOXO, Cynthia

Wow...thanks Lisa, for brightening in a dark time; brings to mind, as if visually annotating, the Dickens line of what the season might hold: "a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."Thanks and best wishes to you and your family!

I've enjoyed your blog for years and wish you the best of luck with your book. If you happen to check comments today, can you let me know the title of a book I think you mentioned you read in a post at some point. It has "London" in the title and is about a group of people living in the same building just prior to WWII.

If you happen to remember the Title and or author, it would be much appreciated!

Lisa,I am looking forward to your book as i love to read the classics as much for the story as the rich details of the characters' houses and the details of their domestic lives-so often I fantasize about what it would be like to leap into the pages and experience it first hand- I know you understand.Merry Christmas and happy writing!!!

Merry Christmas to you and your boys Lisa!The light of goodness always makes the darkness fade, and when the light fades, darkness reigns...we must all, always with viligance, keep the light shining and keep the darkness at bay...you showed many doing just that in this post...thank you, and many blessings for the New Year!!!Happy writing...xo J~

We will miss your lovely blog in the coming year. I will eagerly look forward to hearing from Lisa once again in 2014. If you can, please take a look at my friend Erin McHugh's latest book, One Good Deed. In the introduction she tells how she discovered a saint in her family and that information inspired her to try to be a better person every day. It's brilliant and so appropriate for what we all are feeling right now.

A truly motivational and life changing book "ONE BOOK FOR LIFE SUCCESS" .The writer has described in Plain English with lot of examples which is easy to understand...For MorePlease watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biORjS8ngv0